The Karnataka High Court, in a landmark judgement, ruled that under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (PoSH Act 2013), a driver-subscriber of a transport aggregator like Ola and Uber is considered an “employee”. With this as a premise, the court ordered Ola to pay Rs 5 lakh as cost and an additional Rs 50,000 as litigation expenses to a woman for failing to act on her complaint.
A single-judge bench of Justice MGS Kamal, on Monday rejected Ola’s contention that it is merely an “intermediary” and partially allowed the petition filed by a woman from Bengaluru.
The judge also ordered the company’s Internal Complaint Committee (ICC) to conduct an inquiry into the complaint dated September 30, 2018, in accordance with the provisions of the PoSH Act, 2013, and submit the report to the district officer within 90 days.
The court further found the officers of Karnataka State Transport Authority (KSTA) guilty of deliberate inaction and negligence in discharging their statutory obligations, imposing a penalty of Rs 1 lakh, payable to the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority within 30 days.
Background
The case commenced on August 23, 2018, when the complainant, a regular user of Ola, booked a taxi through the platform to commute from her residence in Yelahanka to her office in JP Nagar in Bengaluru.
She noticed the driver stare at her through the rear-view mirror in an uncomfortable manner. Things became bad to worse when he started watching a pornographic video on his phone while also masturbating.
The driver refused to stop the vehicle despite repeated requests from the woman insisted on dropping her at her destination. She finally managed to exit the taxi only near her workplace.
The petitioner lodged a complaint against the diver on the Ola app. However, the petitioner was not satisfied with the response by Ola executives, who said that the driver concerned had been “blacklisted” and would be sent for counselling and further training.
Ola attempted to convince her to close the complaint, but she demanded a harsher punitive measure against the driver.
Ola management and ICC claimed they had no jurisdiction to take any further action against the driver as there was no employer-employee relationship, and the actual perpetrator was an impostor who was not even authorised to drive the vehicle in question.
The court rejected the arguments and held the aggregator responsible.
Page Source : Economic Times
